How to make Brand more exciting

April 30, 2013

Glendale's main street, Brand Boulevard, needs a better mix of retail tenants if it's ever going to promote more pedestrian traffic and coax people out of the Americana.

Let's see, a law office, a dentist, two copy stores, a thrift store, a corset shop, a beauty school where you can watch students perform $5 haircuts or sit in their chairs looking bored out of their minds? Yes, there is a Starbucks, but it’s the smallest and most cramped one you will every find. And of course, several empty store fronts.

I don't purport that Brand will ever be akin to Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena, but one need not look very far — Ventura Boulevard in Studio City or even San Fernando Road in Burbank near the Media Center Mall — to see much more exciting things going on and a lot more people there to check it out. Thank heavens for Porto's, the only thing keeping Brand Boulevard from flat-lining altogether.